Plant propagation: Cuttings

Cuttings are pieces of plants rooted to create new plants exactly like the parent tree. They are preferred over using seeds when dealing with fruit trees and some herbs. Fig, grape, plum, guava, peach, dragon fruit, cacti, and salad trees root easily. Although rooting powder for edible plants increases the chances of successful rooting, some use honey, cinnamon, willow extract, and aloe vera increases the chances of rooting but is not as effective as rooting powder.

Apple cuttings — Freshly harvested apple cuttings prepared for rooting.

Advantages of Cuttings

Plum cuttings — Hardwood (HW), semi-hardwood (SHW) and softwood (SW) plum cuttings trimmed to size and dipped in rooting powder. The bottom right picture shows some cuttings developing leaf shoots, a sign of rooting three months later.

1. The product is true to type (produces fruit exactly like that of the parent plant).

1. The plants produced have the exact age of the plant you harvested from the parent tree, so they will start to flower as soon as they are rooted and well-established.

1. They are easier and cheaper to transport than a grown tree.

1. Unlike grafting, you don’t need a rootstock, which is essential for exotic plants with no local access to rootstocks.

1. They develop strong roots with no risk of graft rejection, unlike grafted plants.

1. They are less likely to die when well acclimatised, unlike seed-grown plants and plants grafted on very young rootstocks.

1. If they die back to the root, new sprouts may shoot that are true to type, unlike grafted trees, which produce shoots of the rootstock rather than the graft.

1. There is no need to be vigilant with rootstock suckers that can overrun the graft. Even the lowest branches will be true to type, harvested to make more cuttings, and removed for plant training and disease prevention.

1. They remain smaller and easier to manage than seed-grown fruit trees.

Potted quince cuttings — Quince cuttings are rooting in the same pot as the mother plant. The flowers will be removed because the rooted cutting is still too small to support mature fruits. They are likely to fall off without reaching full maturity.

Disadvantages of cuttings

The larger potted plants are air layers growing next to the smaller cuttings. The air layer can support a few fruits within the year, unlike the thin cuttings.

1. Plants from cuttings are initially smaller since huge cuttings dry out before rooting, unlike air layers. So they may start flowering once established, but they need a year or two to thicken their branches enough to support a good fruit yield.

1. Not all plants can be rooted. Some plants are stubborn and can only be rooted by air layering or not at all.

1. One needs more skill in root cutting than in planting seeds. However, with practice and experimentation, some gardeners achieve high success from rooting cuttings. It is a skill worth having for every garden lover: making backup plants to reduce the cost of plant replacements.

1. You need more scion wood than cuttings because you use larger pieces to root cuttings successfully.

Pongamia cuttings and air layer in a polythene bag — A thick-stemmed Pongamia air layer is sharing a poly bag with the thinner rooting cuttings. It will take more than two years for them to read the same size and thickness as the air layer. It is one of the reasons air-layered fruit trees may be more costly than those propagated by other methods.

When to pot the cuttings

It is difficult to know if all the cuttings are rooted successfully, as some may leaf out without rooting. It may take one to six months to form good roots, depending on the season, the type of cuttings and the plant being propagated. You may use transparent containers to see the roots, or wait for them to show through the planter holes. Cuttings that form little branches that continue growing have well-developed roots and are ready for individual pots.